NFL Fantasy Football: 9 Quarterbacks You Should Avoid Like the Plague

Most fantasy football leagues—sane ones, that is—have no more than 12 teams. That means if everyone has one starting quarterback and one backup, the best 24 starting quarterbacks would be on everyone's roster.

Which also means there are about eight starting quarterbacks—plus a tempting backup—who are fantasy cancers whose sole purpose is to take up a roster slot you could use on, say, a backup running back who's about to get the bulk of the carries. He just sits there riding your bench, undoubtedly sowing seeds of discontentment in your fantasy team's locker room and causing Chris Johnson to somehow start averaging NEGATIVE yardage.

So as a public service, I present these nine quarterbacks to you. Remember: Every time you pick up one of these quarterbacks, James Harrison kills a kitten.

Sam Bradford

Aside from a good Week 2 performance against the Redskins—a team which clearly ran out of cap room and signed a few fans to fill out their secondary in exchange for copies of Madden '13—Bradford has played like a fill-in for a franchise looking for a new quarterback. Which is bad, because he was a rookie two seasons ago.

He has managed a touchdown and three interceptions while averaging less than 200 yards in those other three games. That sounds a little bit like last year, when he started 10 games and turned the ball over 13 times with only six touchdowns to his name and 216 yards per game.

Mark Sanchez

Anyone who drafted Mark Sanchez deserves the pain he has inflicted on them. What on earth were you thinking drafting Sanchez? He's got an arm like a wet noodle. He looks like a lost child when he drops back to pass. He's apparently colorblind and unable to tell the difference between the jerseys of the teams on the field. None of these are unknown things.

His career QB rating after three-and-a-quarter years in the league comes out to a C- on the numerical scale—which probably matches his GPA at USC.

Josh Freeman

By far, Josh Freeman's best season was in 2010. He put up 25 touchdowns while throwing only six interceptions. This is something he will never repeat, ever. And even then, he put up an average of 15 fantasy points per game.

Please, just let him disappear into the fantasy ether, never to be heard from again.

Matt Hasselbeck

With Jake Locker going down for the Titans, some of you are going to grab Matt Hasselbeck off waivers. Let me tell you what's going to happen over the next few weeks after you do that.

Most likely, you will put him on your bench, not really intending to do anything with him. And then the wheels in your head may start turning. You will look at the disappointing performances of a Jay Cutler or a Tony Romo occupying your starting spot. You will start to think, hey, it can't get any worse, right?

You might start Hasselbeck. Hasselbeck will start the game with a 20-yard pass, making you unreasonably excited. You will tell yourself, midway through the first quarter, that he had a pretty good 2007. And then he will fumble on the next possession and end up with 186 yards and three turnovers on the day as Jay Cutler throws 350 yards and three touchdowns against the Jaguars.

The future will not deviate whatsoever from what I have just described.

Brandon Weeden

The drafting of Brandon Weeden is really symbolic of the Browns organization as a whole. As all the bigger, better, cooler franchises get awesome players like Andrew Luck and RGIII, the Browns are relegated to getting excited about a guy approaching his 30s who was drafted by the Yankees a decade ago as a pitcher and retired partly due to injury problems.

But rather than become a lifetime coach of a minor league squad, Weeden decided to become the starting quarterback for the Browns.

Russell Wilson

The Seahawks are a truly bizarre organization. Or they have four different people unilaterally making personnel decisions. In any event, the organization signed Matt Flynn for three years and $19.5 million—$10 million guaranteed!—based solely on the fact that he ran up the score on the Detroit Lions defense on Aaron Rodgers' day off.

What they got was the world's most expensive benchwarmer, as Pete Carroll ended up making Russell Wilson the first-string starter.

In four games, he has a grand total of 594 yards passing. Check that, 553. I'm not counting that pass from a certain Monday night game of which we shall never speak again.

Tim Tebow

Please, just don't. I know Mark Sanchez is so unbelievably horrible that Jets fans will soon be buying a billboard over the New Jersey Turnpike imploring Rex Ryan to start Tebow, and after a couple of weeks, Rex will send Sanchez back to USC to learn how to play quarterback again.

But please do not insult your own intelligence by picking up Tebow, even after all this transpires. I don't know the rules of your fantasy league, but I'll bet you don't get extra QB points for sucking for 59 minutes as your defense puts on a virtuoso performance, then driving your team about 20 yards with eight seconds left and then having your kicker boot a 58-yard field goal to win the game.

Blaine Gabbert

Even his name sounds like one a crappy quarterback would have. No great quarterback will ever be called Blaine. I'm just going to go ahead and predict that now. Joe Montana and Dan Marino could find some way to create a child in the lab, teach him everything they know about football, make him watch Any Given Sunday 4,000 times and train with him every day all his life, and if they name him "Blaine," he will spend exactly one-and-a-half seasons as a starter throwing for 150 yards per game before being benched in favor of Matt Hasselbeck.

In conclusion, Blaine Gabbert had a 65.4 QB rating last year and is terrible.

Ryan Tannehill

I almost forgot the Miami Dolphins were an NFL team. Perhaps one of the most amusing sideshows of the 2012 NFL draft was that of general manager Jeff Ireland, who, knowing that his team needed a quarterback and knowing that Griffin and Andrew Luck would be off the board by pick No. 8, tried to convince the world that Tannehill was totally his preferred choice. No, really.

According to Pro Football Talk, Ireland actually uttered the following words on a Miami radio station:

“If we had eight to ten more games of film to watch Ryan Tannehill play that position, I think we’re looking at him in the same breath as Griffin and maybe Luck. I think he’s got that kind of ability and arm talent."